Somatosensory System - Behavioral Neuroscience

Flashcards covering key concepts and terms related to the somatosensory system.

Somatosensory receptors

Specialized cells that detect mechanical pressure and distortion, including Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner's corpuscles, Merkel's disks, and Ruffini's endings.

Mechanoreceptors

Sensory receptors that respond to physical distortion such as bending and stretching.

Afferent axons

Nerve fibers that carry sensory information from peripheral receptors to the central nervous system.

Dorsal column-medial lemniscal pathway

A neural pathway that carries tactile information from the body to the brain.

Trigeminal touch pathway

A neural pathway that transmits tactile information from the face to the brainstem.

Two-point discrimination

The ability to perceive two closely spaced points of touch as distinct stimuli.

Adaptation

The phenomenon where sensory receptors reduce their response to a constant stimulus over time.

Receptive field

The specific region of sensory space in which a stimulus will modify the response of a sensory neuron.

Somatosensory cortex

The area of the brain responsible for processing somatosensory information, located in the parietal lobe.

Homunculus

A distorted representation of the human body based on the sensory input received from different body parts, showing the relative size of the sensory cortex devoted to each part.